Black Folks' Sweet Potato Pie Recipe: Authentic Sweet Potato Pie Recipe - Blend of Bites (2024)

FAQs

What is the African American history of sweet potato pie? ›

After emancipation, when African American cooks gained more access to their own equipment and refined ingredients, they continued the tradition of baking with yams and sweet potatoes — especially the pie. These deep roots became the foundation of a strong tradition in African American food culture.

There could be a few reasons why your sweet potato pie isn't firm: you may have overcooked it, the filling may not be thick enough, or you may have used too much liquid. If your recipe doesn't call for eggs, try adding two eggs to the filling mixture to see if that helps thicken it up.

If the bottom crust doesn't set before the filling soaks in, it's going to be gummy. A metal pie pan placed on a preheated surface will set the bottom crust quickest; once cooked, the liquids from the filling above won't soak in, and as a result: no soggy bottom.

What is the favorite pie of Black people? African-Americans today have continued the tradition of sweet potato pie with holiday dinners. So yes, sweet potato pie is a Black thing – easy enough for anyone to make, and everyone to love!

In Africa, sweet potatoes can be served at any meal of the day and are commonly boiled and consumed plain or served with a peanut-tomato sauce.

Sweet potato pie is a traditional dessert, originating in the Southern United States. It is often served during the American holiday season, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas in place of pumpkin pie, which is more traditional in other regions of the United States.

Singer Patti LaBelle learned this pie recipe from her best friend and hairstylist Norma Gordon Harris. This sweet potato pie has a thin layer of brown sugar on the bottom crust. This "black bottom" doesn't just add flavor, it also helps keep the filling from making the crust soggy.

Vintage Funeral Pie Recipe is an old-fashioned dessert that is made from raisins, spices, and walnuts. It was traditionally made by the Amish, but this sugary pie fits right into a Southern cook's recipe box.

AVA said that sweet potatoes contain flavonoids (a type of anti-oxidant), and water-soluble pigments which may cause colour changes. "The greenish colour can be due to a natural occurrence, when the water soluble pigments in the cooked sweet potatoes are exposed to air," AVA said.

Such recipes typically call for milk and eggs, which require immediate refrigeration, so if your pie is left out at room temperature for longer than two hours, it needs to be thrown out, according to the USDA. However, if the temperature is at 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, this time decreases to one hour.

How do you thicken a sweet pie filling? ›

All-purpose flour is an easy solution, as you're sure to have it in your pantry. Since it's lower in starch, you'll use more of it than you would higher-starch thickeners. Quick-cooking tapioca makes filling bright and clear, but also gives it a stippled and somewhat sticky texture.

Like David Wilcox says, baking the sweet potato produces a deeper flavor. I find that baking them brings out a sweeter flavor as well. But what you need to do is experiment and bake a pie using sweet potatoes that have been prepared both ways. You might find that you like it better when they are boiled.

Soggy bottoms

And finally, the most frustrating pastry problem of all – the soggy bottom. This normally happens when the oven is not hot enough or the pastry is not baked for long enough. However, it can also be because too much water was added to the dough.

The tradition was soon brought to America during slavery, where the African slaves transformed the dessert into something sweeter using yams, then sweet potatoes. Coincidentally, yams and black-eyed peas was a common food slaves were fed during the Middle Passage.

History. Though creamy vegetable pie recipes date back to Medieval Europe, sweet potato pie appears in the southern United States from the early colonial days. The use of sweet potatoes in Southern and Black-American cuisine traces back to Native American cuisine.

The sweet potato originates in South America in what is present-day Ecuador. The domestication of sweet potato occurred in either Central or South America.

For some newly arrived slaves this may have originally been a preference due to the alternatives being either hard to digest or unpalatable. Miller writes, “Sweet potatoes were an integral part of plantation foodways, and poor whites ate them as well.